


you painted blood on my stars // all I want is to keep you warm

by tenthousandfireflies



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, LIam's POV, M/M, Pining, Theo's POV, bc they don't know how else to deal with their feelings, bed sharing, both pov are included, kinda canon kinda not, they punch each other a lot, this is mostly fluff and mutual pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2018-12-30 13:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12109875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenthousandfireflies/pseuds/tenthousandfireflies
Summary: Liam doesn't understand why he always gets angry at Theo and feels the need to punch him whenever he's around. Which is a lot of time since Scott keeps sending them away in the woods to "check on things".or: Theo is always trying to keep Liam safe and Liam doesn't understand why that bothers him so much.





	1. all i want is to keep you warm

_All I want is to keep you warm  
But darling it’s blinding and it blinds, us all_

…

 _It’s taking a lot away_  
_And oh my God I need your love_  
_To keep these demons at bay_

 

-

 

When they finally reached the Hale cabin the sky had darkened and Theo couldn't have seen three feet in front of him if it hadn’t been for his gifted chimera’s eyesight.

He felt Liam stumble behind him and he turned just in time to see the young beta grip the nearest tree branch to avoid falling on his ass. A small smile played on Theo’s lips before he quickly turned away from Liam and pushed the cabin’s door open.

Scott had told them that Derek’s family owned many cabins in the woods, small ones and bigger ones, but he obviously had forgot to mention that this particular one, the one in which he and Liam were supposed to spend the night, was about the size of a cupboard and very much about to fall apart by the look of it. The cabin wasn’t furnished much, only a small dirty kitchen stove left to the bed on the far wall and a tiny table with two stools thrown around it. Theo squinted in the dark and registered a small and dust-covered bed in the farthest right corner, pushed against a wall in which a small window was cut into the wood. The good news was that he could finally sleep, the bad one was that the lonely bed meant that one of them had to sleep on the floor.

Theo sighed as a shiver ran down his spine. The temperatures had dropped below the zero and the prospect of a night on the floor didn’t exactly help him feel warmer. Although he had already decided that by no means he would let Liam sleep on the floor, he had also sworn to himself that he couldn’t let Liam get away with taking the bed too easily.

“I’ve heard of dogs sleeping on the floor, but chimeras? Not their habitat.” Theo smirked and turned to watch Liam who was crossing the threshold behind him. He saw Liam come to an abrupt stop right behind him and right after he felt a wave of warmth coming from his body to where he had stopped against Theo’s back.

“Very funny Theo. I have never heard that joke before.” Liam was clearly pissed off. Not that Theo could blame him, he didn’t know what he would have done if the roles had been reversed and, after a day of running around in the woods, Liam would have told him he had to sleep on the floor.

When Scott had sent them off in the forest to “Check on things, make sure that there isn’t any omega roaming the woods all alone.” and had given them a badly drawn map that was meant to help them locate some of the Hale’s cabins in case they needed a place to spend the night, Liam had tried to protest.

“You want to send me and Theo out there alone? Expecting me not to kill him? Or him not to kill me? I’m sure I’d be more useful to you alive, Scott! Why can’t-”

Theo had jumped in, interrupting the young beta before Liam could ask Scott to send somebody else or to let him stay in Beacon Hills.

“I get it that you are scared Liam. I just thought that being your responsibility and everything meant you didn't chicken out of these missions and kept by my side...” He had trailed off and stared at Liam, hoping to see the look of determination he had come to know too well and that he was now able to produce easily whenever he wanted to get Liam to feel like he was being challenged.

He couldn’t help the corner of his mouth twitching up in a teasing smile when he saw Liam grit his teeth and take a step towards Scott to snatch the map from his hands before he stormed off. In that moment Theo felt proud of himself for knowing exactly which one of Liam heartstrings he had to touch to get what he wanted.

“See ya!” Theo had laughed as he lifted his hand to greet Scott who stood in the parking lot shaking his head behind Theo's back. As he had speed up to catch up to Liam, Theo had felt his heart flip at the prospect of spending three days alone with Liam in the woods.

This was because Theo had made it his personal mission to learn as much as he could about Liam. Ever since the first time Liam had casually told him that he was into history and that he was considering becoming an history teacher, Theo had felt hungry for more insights in the other boy's head. The information had been given to him like it was nothing, a small inside into Liam’s mind, dropped in the middle of many other sentences they had exchanged during the afternoon spent in the library, while they were trying to find a book that contained a small section on sea creature that Mason, who was at home with a fever, had become interested in.

Theo had known that Liam hadn’t given much weight to the confession that didn't smoother the sensation that had just been given an unexpected gif. It was unusual for him to learn something about Liam that didn’t have to do with his werewolf side. Theo knew a lot about the way Liam fought, the way he played Lacrosse or the look of submission he gave his alpha whenever Scott ordered him to do something but to what had thrown him off balance was to learn something about Liam _the teenager._  Theo had felt something funny flutter in his stomach after Liam had told him and he had not been able to resume the search of the book, too busy staring at the way the other boy’s hair fell on his forehead, or listening to the huffs of impatience Liam let out whenever he had drop another book that had turned up to be useless. Since that day Theo had started to see Liam under another light, a kinder one that took off the edges and the rawness so common in Liam’s character.

Theo had also started to do everything he could to unravel more about Liam’s personal interests and life, doing everything he could think of to get the boy to open up to him a bit about his interests and to selfishly be able to feed the fluttering sensation that didn't seem intentioned to leave his stomach. And although he had never felt it before he had known straightaway that the fluttering in his stomach meant that what he felt for Liam had become something more than friendliness. He did not understand it but he treasured this new sensation, although he didn't let it show. The only thing that could give his crush on Liam away had been the urge to keep him safe that had grown stronger than ever from the moment Theo had acknowledged his feelings.

Theo felt Liam’s hand on his shoulder as the boy brushed his arm while entering the cabin and taking a few steps on the squeaky floor, making the wooden floorboard creak and interrupting Theo's flow of thoughts. 

“There’s no way I’m sleeping on this.” Liam said nodding to the floor.

“Alright princess” Theo tried to muster in his voice as much sarcasm as he could. “The last thing I want is to have to deal with you pissed off and tired tomorrow while we run around the woods.” He let his bag fall on the ground and crouched to take his sleeping bag out of it as a cloud of dust settled around him.

“Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to sleep.” He said while laying down on the sleeping bag, before Liam could say anything. He adjusted himself so that his body was facing away from the bed and from Liam, standing next to it, watching him.

“Th- thank you?” Liam voice came to him a bit surprised and unsure.

Theo just grunted and waited to hear the creak of the bed. It came a few seconds later when Liam finally lied down on it. 

It wasn’t like Theo hadn’t practiced sleeping curled up in his car with his limbs in the most uncomfortable positions anyway.

~

Theo was woken up by one of his nightmares but before he could process exactly what it had been about, he heard the sound of clattering teeth coming from beside him.

He tuned to the sound of Liam’s heartbeat to be sure that the boy wasn’t asleep. Listening to the relatively quick beats of Liam’s heart confirmed his assumption so he turned his head to look at the bed and made out Liam’s shape in the darkness of the room. The boy was lying down hugging his chest with his arms, eyes wide open turned to the ceiling.

Theo turned his whole body so that it was now facing the bed.

“Liam” he called out quietly.

“Wh-what?” the answer came in the dark space, accompanied by the clink of teeth knocking together.

“Are you cold?” he inquired “Aren’t werewolves supposed to always be warm?” he finished, amusement in his voice.

“You watched Twilight too many times dude.” Liam answered through gritted teeth.

Theo smirked at the dark silhouette.

“I did actually.” He decided to push it. “Looks like I am not the only one tho. Or you wouldn’t have known what I was referring to.”

He listened to Liam shift in his bed.

“Did you watch it to learn how to be a werewolf?” he joked. After a heartbeat he heard Liam grunt and turn towards him.

“I might have binge watched it after Scott bite me…” Liam trailed off.

Theo wasn’t expecting that to be the answer. He was ready to hear Liam telling him to fuck off but he hadn’t expected Liam to admit to what he only intended as a joke. For a moment he felt the butterflies he had grown used to, coming alive in his stomach. Once again Liam had spontaneously shown him a little bit of himself, had given him the chance to pry into his past.

“I was trying to understand... some things. It obviously didn’t help at all.” Liam continued after a short pause. “Twilight werewolves are fake werewolves” Theo heard Liam mumble to himself.

Theo spoke before he could let himself think too much about it.

“If you are a real Twilight fan then you know what happens when somebody is cold and there’s no other way to get warm.” he said as he stood up.

The thought of Liam lying cold and sleepless a few feet away from him had woken up the part of Theo that wanted to keep Liam safe. The one that he obviously couldn’t shut off even in the middle of the night, when he was still half asleep.

Everybody in the pack seemed to have caught up on Theo’s protectiveness towards Liam and although nobody ever confronted him about it he knew that, in spite of him playing it off, he wasn’t being too subtle, and that the subject was bound to be brought up among the members of Scott’s pack sometimes soon. Everybody seemed to be aware, everybody except Liam himself of course. Liam who punctually kept demanding Theo to explain his actions; to tell him why he had saved him from the hunters, why he had offered himself as bait, why, why, why.

 “Where are you goi-“ Liam stopped as Theo paused in front of the bed.

Theo looked down at him “Scoot over.” he ordered.

“Why?”

Theo sighed, Liam couldn’t apparently live without asking stupid questions.

“Because I’m laying down, you idiot. Are you sure you watched Twilight?” He lowered himself down and sat on the edge of the bed. Liam was staring at him, his mouth forming an “o” and didn’t seem intentioned to move. Theo laid his hands on the boy’s hips and pushed him. Liam kept staring at him with his lips parted in disbelief and Theo allowed himself the time to let his eyes trail over the boy’s lips, blue from the cold.

He had to stop thinking about what it would feel like to cover them with his own, to know what Liam’s mouth tasted like, to warm up the boy with his breath alone. He needed to stop thinking about it and needed to do it fast.

“Liam.” He growled. “I’m sure you don’t mind staying up all night shivering like a wet puppy but I have other plans. I would like to get some sleep and I can’t if you’re making all that noise.” He waved in the direction of Liam’s clattering teeth and pushed him a little bit more towards the side of the bed that faced the wall before he could finally lie down, extending his legs along Liam’s.

Liam was still lying very still and only when Theo removed his hands from the boy’s hips he finally adjusted to give space to the chimera.

Before Liam could say anything, Theo moved his left arm under the boy’s neck and wrapped his right one around Liam’s waist. He felt Liam tense up.

“I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find a dead, frozen body, either.” He was aware that this excuse was the worst one he could come up with but Liam hadn’t rejected him so far, that had to mean that he wasn’t so against the idea of sharing a bed with him, right?

Before he could freak out and let his mind travel down the path of Liam not being okay with this accommodation he felt Liam's body relax a little and the boy pushed his back closer to Theo’s chest. Theo held his breath for a moment, not daring to move.

He focused on hearing Liam’s heartbeat before he realized that he had placed his hand on the other boy’s chest and that he could for once feel it with the palm of his hand, instead of using his hearing. The boy’s heart was beating really fast and didn’t slow down for a while. Theo was terrified of having crossed a line. Maybe Liam didn’t want him there, maybe he was scared and didn’t trust Theo. He felt sick at the thought that after all they had been through Liam could still not trust him.

“Whatever. Goodnight Theo.” Liam mumbled, his voice only slightly strained by something that Theo couldn’t decipher but that definitely wasn’t fear.

Theo let out the breath he had been holding and inhaled Liam’s shampoo smell with the next intake of air.

He had never consciously planned for this to happen but there he was, lying down with his arms around Liam, just where he had wanted them to be more times that he cared to admit. His stomach was warm and his heart felt lighter than ever when he finally felt Liam’s heartbeat slow down under his palm. A few moments later Liam was asleep in his arms and Theo had never felt more content. He was finally able to fall asleep, a smile ghosting on his lips, nightmares kept at bay by the unexpected embrace.

~

A stripe of sun was burning his forehead when Theo opened his eyes. He focused his eyes on what was lying in front of his face but before he could make out exactly what the mess of hair was, he was brought back to the night before and remembered that he had slept with Liam.

Shared a bed with him. Not slept, _slept_ with him. Hugged him but not-

Theo forced his mind to stop thinking about Liam and sleeping with him and he carefully pushed himself up on one arm to peek at Liam’s sleeping face.

The ray of sun that had been burning his skin was falling on Liam’s face as well. Sleep had taken away all the edges from the other boy’s face and the sun was now crowning him, giving him the appearance of…

Theo tried but failed to put into thoughts what Liam looked like. Since when did he become such a a sappy person? His chest tightened as he resisted the impulse to reach out and swipe away Liam’s hair that were falling in his eyes.

  
He decided that it was best for him to get up before he did something very, _very_ , stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song at the beginning of the chapter and in the title is "Equinox Storm" by Oliver Daldry (check him out, I am in love with his last album and his songs in general). 
> 
> I don't know when I will be posting the next chapter but i have it written, I just need to review and edit some parts :)
> 
> As you might have noticed English isn't my first language so that's why I mess up the grammar and idioms and why my sentences might be a bit hard to get through... forgive me, I hope the mood of the fic isn't killed by my poor writing skills.


	2. you lost me in the maze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go. I know that I said that I wouldn't wait to long until I'd post the second chapter and I initially wanted to post it the day after the first one BUT in the meantime I added a lot and edited a lot of what I had already written.

 

 _Remind me how I was with sentient skin_  
_A feeling within_  
_I fought it back into the chest_

  
_You lost me in the maze_  
_With pictures of your face_  
_Were lucid in the haze_  
_They took up so much space_

 

-

 

Liam was trying not to lose sight of Theo’s back as he followed him through brushes and three branches that kept slapping him on the face as the boy in front of him released them behind himself. 

“Could you just-” a branch hit him on the face before he was able to finish the sentence. “Fuck, Theo! I’m walking right behind you in case you haven’t notic-” another branch slapped him.

“STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!” Liam snarled at Theo’s back. 

Theo quickly turned towards him, his eyes wide open. He stopped walking and brought his hands into his hair to straighten them. 

“How could I haven’t noticed? You haven’t done anything else for the past three months!” Theo snapped.

“I’m trying to get back to the car and leave these woods behind as fast as I can. I haven’t seen anything but trees for days! I’d really appreciate if you’d just shut up and followed me in silence!”. Theo turned again, releasing another branch he had been holding while he spoke to him. Liam felt that his claws were threatening to come out so he took a deep breath to calm himself before he answered Theo.

“I would be more than glad to do just that if only you would stop walking like I’m not plastered to your ass.” Liam regretted saying those words as soon as the last “s” of “ass” was out of his mouth.

The fact that he had only pointed out things as they were did not help him feel any better about the wording he had chosen.

Liam felt himself blush and lowered his head. The last thing he needed was for Theo to turn around again and catch a glimpse of red on his cheeks.

Not that the boy would notice in the darkening hour. Or care. But still.

The thing was, Theo was right. Liam _had_ been spending a lot of time at his side lately. More specifically ever since _he_ had brought Theo back from hell. 

It all had begun when he had been told that from the moment Theo would have set feet on this world again, he would have been his responsibility. Liam had taken the task of keeping an eye on the chimera very seriously, his sense of responsibility growing like never before in the past months.

At first Liam had been reluctant to ever leave Theo alone because he didn’t trust him at all and wouldn’t risk fucking things up for everybody, over something he could have prevented from happening if he had kept by Theo’s side like he was supposed to. He had never been sure what exactly he was preventing Theo from doing but then again, the boy had crawled back up from hell. Hell. The very hot and nasty place where he had been sent after proving everybody how insanely mean he could be.

So maybe that was one of the reason why Liam wanted to punch him most of the time. To make him pay for everything he had done in the past. Or maybe it was to avoid that Theo would become too confident and would start believing that he had a place in the pack, that the others accepted him as part of their chosen family.

One or the other. Or both. 

Liam was still very confused about the possible motivations beneath this urge of his, but what he knew for sure, was that it never went away. Liam had grown used to it of course, but he could not make it go away. Maybe it was because he still hadn’t identified the exact source of the desire, and couldn’t therefore fight its roots, but, ever since Theo had emerged from the ground, glowing eyes fixed on him, Liam hadn’t stopped for a moment feeling like his fist belonged on Theo’s face.

What bothered Liam the most at the current time, was that, although he could not exactly pinpoint the reason why he wanted to fight Theo so badly, he felt like the source behind this impulse lately seemed to have _shifted_ in his body. Liam knew that if he would have been to ever speak with anyone about these confused feelings and sensations, they would have for sure told him that he wasn’t making any sense. They would ask him how he could say that he felt like the reason behind his urge to punch Theo had changed, when he didn’t know what that reason was in the first place.

Liam wouldn’t have known how to explain it to anyone, but that didn’t mean that he felt like the change was any less real.

The thing was that lately Liam had started to feel the need to hear his knuckles shatter against Theo’s jaw, every time that Theo proposed a plan that actually made sense or came up with an idea on how to solve a problem the pack had been struggling with for weeks (other than every time the other boy showed off or made a very Theo-like comment).  

Which didn’t make any sense in his head because, although he wished he could, he could not deny that ever since Theo had joined them, he had been noting but useful and collaborative.

When Liam had first brought the chimera back from hell he never would have thought it possible, and still to this day he would never admit it, but Theo clearly worked in the pack’s dynamics.

The more the pack worked with Theo as a team, after slowly learning that they could trust him, the more Liam was convinced that he had made the right choice by bringing him back (and especially by not sending him back again underground, like he had threatened to do more than once).

That was why the past months Liam had felt nothing but confusion in regard to anything Theo-related. How could he feel that the other boy had become indispensable to the pack, while struggling, at the same time, with the impulse to knock him off whenever he got the chance to do so?

 

Liam stared at Theo’s back while the other boy climbed the trunk of a tree that had fallen in the path they were walking on. He waited till Theo was on the other side of the obstacle before he followed him, jumping the trunk with the help of his werewolf’s strength, before he allowed his mind to skip to what had happened the night before in the cabin.

 

When Theo had stood up and had come to the side of the bed Liam had expected that the other boy wanted to throw him off it. He was surprised that Theo had left the bed to him in the first place, and a part of his brain had been waiting for Theo to tell him he had been joking and that he would have to sleep on the floor. That’s why he had paused for some time in front of the bed, after Theo had told him that he could use it, before finally flopping onto it and trying to get some sleep.

Liam had however soon realised that having a bed to lay on didn’t necessarily mean being able to sleep comfortably. As the cold penetrated him to his bones he had wondered about Theo and how much more horrible sleeping on the floor must have been for the boy. He had tried to push these thoughts from his mind and tried to fall asleep, but it appeared that the only thing he could do was shivering in the cold.

He hadn’t realised that his clattering teeth were being quite so loud until he had heard Theo whisper his name, some time after Liam had felt him fall asleep.

The last thing he imagined when he had heard his name was to have a conversation about Twilight ( _Twilight_  …really?) that would have ended with Theo inviting himself into the cold bed.

Liam thought back about how the shock of having Theo offering to keep him warm had caused every cell in his body to stop working and every atom to- …  do whatever was it that atoms did. He had never been good at science.

The only thing Liam remembered had happened before he had felt Theo’s arms around him was the warmth of the other boy’s hands on his hips when Theo had gently pushed him to get more space to lie down. Next thing he knew Theo had wrapped his arms around him and Liam’s mind had gone blank.

 

Liam avoided stepping in a small puddle in the middle of the path and shook his head. Of course he had panicked. Of course he had not been able to think straight for a moment. Theo was after all the person that had tried to kill Scott, somewhere inside of the chimera there was still a part of him that had come up with a plan to get a pack that involved everybody who stood in his way. That was why Liam had been unable to do anything and had been unable to think, because he had been scared that Theo would try to hurt him.

 

Liam let out a small sigh and watched the cloud of vapour that had formed in front of his eyes quickly disappear in the cold evening air. Even he could see that this explanation didn’t really hold up, that it was more of an excuse. Just like everybody else, he had seen how much Theo had changed from before he went to hell and he knew that the fear of the chimera doing something awful had long disappeared from his conscious and unconscious mind.

This knowledge didn’t help him at all in attempting to sort out his feelings about Theo, it didn’t help him explain the urge to punch him, when he clearly knew that the other boy didn’t have any bad intention towards them. It also didn’t help him excuse his “keeping an eye on Theo”- thing, now that he knew that he could leave him alone without risking to come back to a crime scene.

Liam refocused on the back of the boy in front of him. Theo had kept walking without making any noise and without answering Liam’s outburst and, although he had lessened the intervals between slapping Liam in the face with the tree branches, he didn’t seem interested in stopping doing it. Which by the way, he might as well have done, since the trees were starting to dissipate as they got closer to the limit of the forest.

 

But Liam had learned that Theo was able to tease him for hours on end if only he found a weak spot to pick upon. Liam clearly remembered how for an entire afternoon a couple weeks before, he hadn’t been able to say anything without hearing Theo repeat it in a mocking tone right after he had finished speaking.

The insight on Theo’s ability at teasing people had been only one of the many things Liam had come to notice about the other boy. Since Theo had joined the pack Liam had learned all sort of things about Theo’s character.

He had started to notice even more details about the other boy when, after Theo had officially been deemed trustworthy, Scott had started to send off the two of them on little “missions”, forcing him to spend days alone with the older boy in the woods.

The things that Liam had become accustomed to, where mostly things that didn’t have to do with teamwork and fighting hunters and/or supernatural creatures but rather with the way Theo acted as a human being. Until that moment Liam had known a lot about Theo the chimera but very few to nothing about the boy behind the creature.

For instance, Liam had started to notice how Theo used to bit his lips to try and hold back a smile when somebody in the pack patted him on the shoulder, after he had made a smart suggestion on how to proceed with whatever plan they were making. Or again, Liam had learned that Theo seemed to have a weak spot for cats and started acting really weird around children.

Liam had come to recognise a certain look that Theo got on his face when somebody alluded to his past, the veil of sadness that sometimes fell on his eyes when the chimera thought that nobody was watching.

Was it really sadness? At first Liam hadn’t been sure that Theo could be able to feel such a thing but as time went on he had to admit that what he detected in Theo’s eyes was without any doubt a shade of grief.

The thing was that, the more Liam learned, and didn’t understand, about Theo, the more his anger risked surfacing.

They had started so many fights over nothing.

Usually the fights went down in private, since neither of them wanted to make a scene in front of everybody. They usually waited till they were in the woods where Scott had sent them or till they could find any other place away from the pack, before they hell broke loose and they released their anger at each other _on_ each other.

Liam was the one who usually threw the first punch. It happened for example, after he had been pissed off by the way Theo had complained about having to roam the forest under the rain or by the silly song the other boy was whistling while they were making their way on a difficult path.

 

As the sky turned darker and the street where they had parked Theo’s car approached, Liam thought back on how they biggest fight had originated.

 

They had been running form some hunters and Liam had suggested they’d split up. Without paying too much attention to Theo’s complaints about the plan he had run off in the opposite direction, just to fall in a trap dug on the ground by some hunter only some minutes later he had instructed Theo to go the other way.

Luckily for him the trap hadn’t be alarmed, but he had broken his leg in the fall and had been unable to climb out of the hole. He had sat there, holding his broken leg and thinking about how he didn’t have much time before the hunters would have understood that a prey had fallen in the trap, when he'd seen Theo’s face appearing on the hole’s edges.

The boy had crouched and delicately hauled Liam back up on his legs and out of the trap making as little sound as he could to avoid alerting the hunters that were scattered in the area.

Liam’s leg had healed a few minutes after Theo had helped him up the trap, but on their way to the car Liam had realised that the bone had sealed in the wrong way and after dragging himself to the car by leaning on Theo’s shoulder they had driven to Dr. Deaton’s animal clinic to fix the problem. Deaton had given him a painkiller strong enough to knock him off so that he could break the bone again before putting it into place to heal properly. 

As soon as the drug had worn off, Liam was on his feet again, anger making his whole body shiver.

He had jumped on Theo from behind, catching him by surprise and sending him on the ground.

 “You shouldn’t have been following me! I told you to split up for a reason! You should have been on the other side of the forest!” he remembered shouting in Theo’s bleeding face. The boy had had his nose broken with the impact with ground.

“Oh yeah?!? And where exactly would you be now if I followed your stupid plan?” Theo had snapped back, showing his fangs as his eyes had lighted up.

A part of Liam had known that he should have been glad that Theo had decided to follow him and saved his ass instead of following the plan and going the other way. But a bigger part of him, the part that made him snap, didn’t want to be treated like a puppy who needed to be monitored. He could, and should, have been able to take care of himself and to get out of any situation without needing Theo, of all people, to come to his rescue.

He had been so angry because _he_ was supposed to keep an eye on Theo, not the other way around.

Instead of answering him Liam had punched Theo as the other boy was getting up form the clinic's floor, letting the anger he was feeling spill out of him through his fist.

This time Theo had been ready and answered by wrestling Liam to the ground.

They had rolled around on the Clinic’s floor while the pack had started to gather around them, ignoring everybody who was shouting at them to stop.

Liam remembered how he had been able to remove his hands from around Theo’s neck only when he had heard Scott’s alpha roar.

After Liam had broken off the fight Liam had been glad that for once they had been fighting in a place populated by other people and not in some forest like they usually did. He didn’t think that he could have had seriously hurt Theo if Scott hadn't stopped him, but he wasn’t sure of just how far his inability to tame his anger would have pushed him either. 

Despite everything he could have never forgiven himself for hurting Theo.

 

Liam snapped out of his thoughts and resumed to watching who was still walking with a fast pace right in front of him. Liam knew that the boy wouldn’t stop until they would reach car parked along the street and drive off towards Beacon Hill, leaving the woods behind them.

Theo had made it his mission to redeem himself on Scott’s eyes and that hadn’t stopped once he had been able to officially join the pack. Liam knew that the other boy would have done anything Scott told him to prove just how worth of his trust he was and to prove him how right he had been in allowing him to become one of them. Liam understood that and he had to admit that deep, deep, down he admired Theo’s determination. 

He glanced at the sky and saw that the stars were starting to manifest themselves against the black vault. He realised just then that he and Theo had been out in the woods for three days, sleeping in barely hold together cabins and that he couldn’t wait to fall asleep on a real bed.

He yawned and kept walking, stepping on the footprints that Theo left behind himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The verses at the beginning of the chapter are from The Japanese House's [3/3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycUkaNxanj8) (I love this song and I really love Amber's music).
> 
> Sooo I kinda realized that I set this fic in a temporal framework that takes time after 6x19 and after the last one as well...obvs idk how the finale will be and wether it will end with a major time lapse but yeah...what I mean is that tis takes place when the war is over. This means that I was not bothered to make this canon compliant and that Scott and the rest of the pack didn't leave Beacon Hills for collage after all (@ Jeff Davis if you're reading this: I hope you're smarter than I was when writing this fic and that you will finally allow Scott and the rest to leave Beacon Hills, amen) (( guess we'll find out next week).
> 
> Also: I was fed up of this chapter and wanted to post it so I didn't reread everything I wrote like I should have ...which means that this chapter contains many typos, if you notice any of them please let me know so that i can fix it! 
> 
> I don't know when the next chapter will be up but i have it written (for real this time) (....or do I) so unless the uni work will start to kick in, I will be able to post it in a couple of days <3 
> 
> To everybody who left a comment on the last chapter....I love you, you don't know how much getting positive feedback means to me . Also shoutout to everybody who left kudos and bookmarked it, I hope I wont let you guys down!


	3. I’ll be over there, trying not to care

_Listen to yourself for once I plead_ _  
Is it wrong to pray if you don’t believe?_

“Is it?” the voice came from the passenger seat after a long silence.

Theo stopped listening to the song’s lyrics and turned briefly to stare at Liam sitting beside him before going back to watching the road. They were driving back to Beacon Hills and Liam had been quiet ever since they had gotten in the car, so Theo had turned up the car radio.

_Will you be so kind to comfort me?_ the singer kept singing in Theo’s ears.

Theo furrowed his brow and gripped the steering wheel tighter as he shifted a bit on his seat.

“I mean… do you ever pray?” Liam let out, barely audible over the music.

Theo turned the volume down and looked at the boy again. Liam had his sad-puppy face on, worried expression only broken by a thin hint of hopefulness, the one that always made Theo want to drop everything he was doing to run and wrap Liam up in his arms, until the worry would disappear from the other boy’s features.

He briefly wondered when his fantasies about Liam had become so sweet. He had never been the romantic type. Not that he ever really had a chance to get a crush on someone or, even worse, to fall for somebody. His life hadn’t exactly been following the path that the life of a stereotypical teenager boy would follow, at least up until the last weeks.

Surprisingly enough, things had started to change for him, during the past months. Theo had started to feel a content and quiet feeling in his heart, one he had never felt before but that he recognized as a feeling you get to experience when you finally find a place where you can settle and people you can trust. Theo admitted that he wasn’t the best when it came to deal with feelings and he knew that he had tried to fight this new and unsettling feeling for a while, before he had decided that maybe he could let himself feel it - for now, for a while - until he’d have to run once again.

“I’m an atheist” Theo said after finally snapping out of his thoughts to answer Liam’s question.

He knew that he could have left the confession at that, but the truth run deeper than what he had voiced and withholding it didn’t feel right. He hadn’t really answered Liam question, anyway.

“But, yes, sometimes I do pray.” He stared fixedly at the road and let out a breath before he kept going, words coming easily after he had broken the barrier that had initially kept them at bay.

“Even since I came- since you brought me back from-  you brought me back here, sometimes… I started to feel like I did not deserve to be here after everything I’ve done…”

He trailed off and glanced at Liam. He saw from the corner of his eye that the boy was staring at him, completely still, almost as if he was holding his breath. Theo couldn’t blame him. He had never been so unfiltered with anyone in the pack before this moment and Liam obviously wasn’t expecting him to be so sincere. Although he knew that Scott and the rest of the pack must have wondered about where he stood in regard to the horrible crimes he had committed in the past, he had never really got the chance to let them know about it. Until that moment.

Talking about how sorry he was that he had murdered people in cool blood wasn’t exactly a topic of conversation that could be calmly introduce at breakfast or in his case case, during a break in between fights with the supernatural.

Theo also knew that another reason why he had kept quiet and never brought up the argument with the pack, was that he avoided thinking about the atrocities of his past as much as he could.

Theo tried to come up with an excuse on why he had decided to talk with Liam about it but he couldn’t. He couldn’t deny that the reason had a lot to do with the feeling of safety and comfort he got while being around the pack, being around Liam more than anyone else.

And while he hated himself for giving Liam a weapon to hurt him, to offer him the access he would have needed if he ever wanted to hurt him by using these insights into Theo’s mind, Theo was also aware that he wouldn’t have opened up to Liam if he weren’t one hundred percent sure about doing so. Which could really only mean that he trusted Liam. Theo didn’t really want to go there now, not with Liam sitting beside him, waiting for him to finish talking.

“But that is the closest thing to praying I have ever done. I do that and I don’t believe in God. Or any other god.” He continued and before Liam could say anything. He rationally knew that he didn’t need to protect his vulnerability from Liam since it was the other boy who had started the conversation on the topic, but every experience he had lived before joining the pack had taught him otherwise and habits die hard. Even harder if they’re born from the need to survive. “So make whatever you want out of this.” He winced at the tone of his voice, reflecting the mix of frustration and anger he was feeling towards himself for sharing so many information about himself with Liam, and for being unable to really trust anyone.

Theo really didn’t like to let any of his feelings filter through his voice and wondered if Liam had caught up on the tone. He quickly glanced at the boy and saw that he didn’t seem to be affected by hasty remark with which Theo had concluded his confession.

“I do sometimes, at night.” Liam softly let out after a while.

Theo was suddenly aware of the ball of warmth that was slowly spreading in his stomach while a smile spread on his face.

He had trusted Liam with his secrets and now Liam was doing the same. It was only fair, he thought as he pushed down the warm ball of warmth before it could spread any further and cause him to do sometimes as stupid as reaching out and touching Liam’s face.

He winced inwardly at the thought. Just because for once he had been able to open up with somebody and things hadn’t gone to shit, it didn’t mean that he could allow himself to go all soft on Liam.

Theo hated how affected he was by the boy. He hated it and wished he could stop feeling like that, while at the same he also knew that he would have hurt him to stop feeling that singular warm fire in his stomach that only Liam was able to light up.

In this moment, the need to stroke the other boy’s cheek was growing inside his chest like it hadn’t happened since the morning he had woken up with Liam in his arms and Theo wondered if it was just because Liam had trusted him back, or if behind the ball of fire lay an ulterior motive.

It probably also had to do with Liam’s sleepy tone and tired eyes, with his mussed hair and the fact that he was wearing Theo’s hoodie, Theo thought. The younger boy had put on the hoodie after picking it up from the back of the car where Theo had discarded it. Theo wasn’t looking at him while Liam had worn it, busy starting the car engine. But when he had turned and saw the boy his heart had skipped a beat before a had felt a familiar clutch tugging at his ribcage. Liam had only shrugged and told him that he was cold. Theo had wondered if he would have taken it off, had he known what the sight of him in it was doing to Theo. Just like he hated himself for wanting to caress Liam, to hold him in his arm, to want him to be around so he could feel warmth in his heart; Theo also hated himself for thinking that Liam would be anything but angry if he ever was to find out about Theo’s feelings for him.

Luckily Liam hadn’t finished talking and Theo turned towards him when he heard that the boy was clearing his voice, preventing him to wallow in self-pity about his unrequired and unwanted feelings.

“I usually _pray-_ ” Theo saw that Liam hinted some air quotes with his hands “-when I can’t sleep because I am worried about my friends getting hurt. I know it’s stupid. I know that I can’t save anyone by just thinking about how much I want them to be safe but… sometime that’s the only thing I can do.” Liam had paused for a moment and Theo had hummed to let him know that he was listening.

“Scott once told me that we can’t save everybody and I laughed at him because he’s the first one to jump in a fight, without knowing if he’ll make it out alive if it means saving a friend, or- anyone really. I have thought about it a lot since it happened and I realised that I know what he means and that I agree. Which doesn’t make knowing that your friends are in danger of dying almost every day of their lives any easier.” Theo thought about how Liam didn’t mention that he too risked his life just like anybody else in the pack.

“So I pray for them, and think that maybe if I really believe in my prayers something good will come out of it. But then sometimes I ask myself if I am allowed to pray when I don’t believe and … I- I don’t think the answer matters but… you know, I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that.” Liam trailed off and Theo saw him lifting his eyes from his linked hands, resting on his lap, to Theo’s face while he let out a shaky breath.

A small smile tugged at the other boy’s mouth and Theo was reminded just then that Liam was just a kid. It was easy to forget when they were fighting alongside each other but in moment like these Theo was reminded they both were just kids. So full of questions about life and scared of death. Eager to be reassured by whoever and so easily hurt by life’s cruel ways.

Theo asked himself if the fact that he was older was the reason why Liam seemed to be reassured by knowing that Theo shared some of the same doubts he had. Or if it was because Liam had started to trust him and valued his opinions.

He knew that the answer he would have given to the same question, had it been asked to him, would have been the latter.

After the confession Liam had fell silent again and Theo was comforted by the peaceful atmosphere that had fallen over the two of them. He felt like Liam didn’t want him to add anything and was too scared to break whatever spell they had casted on the car when they had decided to open their hearts to each other. Theo kept driving without feeling the need to fill the silence with words.

 

~

 

By the time they reached Beacon Hills Liam had fallen asleep with his head against the car window. As Theo parked on the street in front of the werewolf’s house Theo avoided thinking about was what going to happen next as much as he could.

He knew that he should have woken Liam up and wave him goodbye as he watched him enter his house before driving off. He knew that that would have been the best thing to do, but after a quick glance at the bags under Liam’s eyes Theo decided against it.

He unbuckled his and Liam’s belt, before gently pulling the sleeping boy towards himself and away from the window. He stopped when he heard a grunt coming from Liam and focused on hearing the boy’s heartbeat. He was relieved to hear that Liam was still sound asleep. What would he have told him if Liam would have woken up?

“ _It’s not what it looks like, I’m just trying to get you out of the car without having your whole body splash on the asphalt when I open the door. It happens that the only way to prevent it from happening is by taking you into my arms… for the second time in three days.”_?

Awkward. Much more better to just do what needed to be done carefully so that Liam wouldn’t wake up and Theo wouldn’t have to explain himself to anybody.

He got out of the car after safely propping up Liam against his seat, and reached to open the car door on Liam’s side. The fresh breeze that entered the cabin made Liam shiver in his sleep but, again, the boy didn’t wake up.

It clearly was Theo’s lucky day.

Before taking Liam into his arms Theo reminded himself that he had already done it once. That he had already carried Liam to his car after he had knocked him out at the zoo to prevented him from killing stupid Nolan. He could do it again. It really wasn’t a big deal.

Except that he couldn’t lie to himself and knew exactly what the sight of Liam asleep did to him.

He felt much like he had the morning he woke up with Liam’s hair on his face and just some hours before in the car. He needed to be extra careful with his impulses. To be careful not to stroke Liam’s cheek like he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about doing for the whole evening.

Theo delicately hauled Liam up in his arms and pushed the car door closed, careful not to make any noise that could wake Liam up.

Earlier that day the boy had told him that his parents were off town for the weekend and Theo had once heard him remind Mason that they kept a spare key under a vase near the door, in case someone forgot theirs at home. These stolen, and not so stolen thanks to Liam and him having actual conversations, information were enough to get Liam inside his house.

Theo glanced around the room that he had miraculously entered with Liam still asleep in his arms, head falling on his chest. After switching up the lights Theo saw a couch on a corner of what must clearly was the living room of the Dunbar family. Theo thought about laying Liam on the sofa without bothering to look for his room, but he couldn’t deny that he was interested in seeing what Liam’s bedroom looked like. He really couldn’t let this chance go by and so he headed for the stairs that took upstairs instead.

Theo immediately recognized what must have been Liam’s bedroom by sniffing the air in the hallway following the tray of Liam’s scent. Not that he would have had any doubt about whose room it was after he’d stepped towards the open door and saw that every foot of the floor was covered in clothes, magazines and other rubbish that could not belong to anybody but to the boy asleep in his arms.

Theo smiled and carefully stepped towards the bed, watching out to avoid stepping on anything that would have made some noise getting him busted. He managed to reach the bed and lower Liam on it.

After checking once again that the boy was still asleep Theo was ready to leave the room but after having stared at Liam for a couple of seconds too long, he saw that he couldn’t move. The need to stoke Liam’s cheek had resurfaced and he felt like there was nothing he could do to make it go away. Except maybe…

_No way_ he clearly thought. _You’re not doing it_ a part of Theo’s brain screamed.

He would not reach out and caress Liam’s face, that would have been too much even for him.

But he also knew that if he were to leave without acting on the impulse he would have stayed up all night thinking back of how close he had been to stretch out his arm and…

Theo fisted his hands, nails digging into his palms, and tried to talk himself out of it, but deep down he knew that he had already made up his mind.

He sighed and hesitantly brought his hand just millimetres away from Liam’s face before he finally broke down the last barrier and carefully passed his fingertips on Liam’s cheek.

He needed to stop. _Right now_.

Theo turned on his heels so fast that he felt his whole body lose balance and starting to fall. Over the bed. Over Liam.

He barely managed to extend his arm and place his hand on the mattress, only a few millimetres away from Liam’s arm, and to pull his weight on it, before he crashed over Liam. That would have been an interesting way to wake up the boy, by falling on top of him after he had managed to carry him to his bed without waking him, and it would have been an even more difficult thing to explain.

Theo pushed himself away from the bed praying that Liam wouldn’t be startled from the weight shift on his mattress. He caught his breath for a moment as he listened carefully to catch any sign of Liam waking up, and released it after a couple of seconds after he didn’t hear anything coming from Liam’s direction.

Theo finally left Liam’s room without thinking twice about it, feeling angry at himself for being so affected by Liam to the point where he had almost fucked up everything just because he wasn’t able to control his impulses.

Theo stormed on the street and got on his car before speeding off towards the abandoned warehouse where he had installed himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaah I am so sorry that I lied to you all when i told you that this chapter would have been up sooner after the second one. In my excuse I have started uni for two weeks now and i'm starting to have a lot of work to do. That's why I can't tell you when the next chapter will be posted and can only assure you that I will post it :)
> 
> As always thanks for all the comments and the kudos that give me the motivation to keep writing and to better myself at it!
> 
> Song in the chapter and title of the chapter is [Equinox Storm](https://open.spotify.com/track/4nqx0HvCtMvq4HxW0ESK1X) by Oliver Daldry (heyy, it's him again, how surprising!). I'm making a playlist of all the songs I used for the fic and I'll post the link with the last chapter.


	4. my hands almost bleeding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long.  
> Blood tw and canon violence tw

 

 _With my hands almost bleeding_ _  
My heart barely beating_

 

 

-

 

Liam couldn’t even blink before the punch reached his face and crashed between his eyes, knocking him backwards. He lost his balance and stumbled a few steps back on the concrete floor. Chalky clouds of dust were climbing from the ground beneath his feet and Liam stepped on a few little rocks before he could shift his body weight and regain his balance. Once he wasn’t risking to fall on the filthy ground anymore he brought a hand to his face to touch the skin where Theo’s fist had hit his nose. When he drew it away, he saw that a stripe of crimson red was painted across his palm and couldn’t hold back a growl that escaped his body through his grinned fangs pointed at Theo.

Liam’s eyes became a warm glowing yellow as he watched Theo standing in front of him, ready to fight with his usual smirk painted on his lips.

“Come on Dunbar, I figured you’d be used to it by now.” Liam was barely able to hear Theo through the static sound cluttering his head, making it really difficult to think, no matter how used to it Liam was.

Most times the sound in his head was the reason why he couldn’t stop hitting whoever he was fighting against and ended up hurting them badly. After so many years of fights and splattered blood he still didn’t know how to silence the noise without doing so by being physically removed from the battle field. Only then he could regain a sense of reality in which the sound didn’t belong and hear it disappear. Until the next time he got angry.

That’s why he had a hard time making Scott’s mantra his own, to use it as an anchor to ground himself to reality without letting the waves of rage pull him under, it wasn’t enough. Nothing ever was. Except-

Liam didn’t have much choice so he still tried to repeat the six words mantra in his head, knowing that the only anchor that seemed to work for him wasn’t available at the moment.

_The sun. The moon. The truth. The-_

“Did I knock the strength to hit back out of you?” Theo’s challenging voice reached him through the barrier of static and interrupted his attempt at calming himself down. The way the boy had spoken was not only full of anger but also charged with something that Liam recognized a note of apprehension that he couldn’t place. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t one to back off a fight, even less so if the person he was fighting was Theo.

He shook his head to try to get rid of the static in his brain before he was ready to finally throw his fist against the boy in front of him.

Liam felt his punch land on Theo’s shoulder and before he could prepare himself to hit again his neck was wrapped into a chokehold by Theo’s arm.

“That’s not fair!” he growled “We were hitting each other, not wrestling!” he was aware that there were no exact rules in this game they were playing with each other, but Theo’s move had caught him by surprise and that was apparently the only answer his brain could come up with. He winced inwardly as he realised that Theo would surely use his stupid answer against him.

“I didn’t know we were playing a ‘ _What’s fair?_ ’ game but since we are… what’s _not_ fair is you barging in here from nowhere!” Theo growled back, still gripping Liam’s neck. “Besides, when have I ever been fair Liam?” The grip around his neck tightened and Liam felt his legs give out from behind him before he could come up with an answer.

Theo hadn’t obviously been ready to sustain Liam’s weight without the werewolf’s help because Liam felt the other boy lose his balance before Theo’s arm was gone from his neck and Liam saw it waving in front of his face instead.

He would have laughed at the turn of events, hadn’t he been hit by Theo’s grabby seconds after he had been freed form the chokehold which resulted in him losing his balance once again and falling backwards, dragging Theo with him.

This time Liam didn’t have time to avoid the fall, Theo’s weight on top of him making the impact with the ground happen faster and harder than he expected.

Liam felt his back hit the ground and Theo’s body crash on top of him soon after. His breath was knocked off his lungs and Liam let his eyes fall close to while he tried to regain his breath.

“You’re soft for being a lacrosse player Dunbar. What’s the secret for being so soft even after all the push ups and all the training you do? How do you pull that off?” Liam heard coming from somewhere above his closed eyes. He slowly lifted his eyelids and found himself staring into Theo’s grey eyes.

“You might want to move from my stomach to hear the answer to that.” He was barely able to let out.

Liam couldn’t tear his eyes away from Theo’s face, hovering millimetres away from his own and he suddenly felt like his breath had been knocked out from his lungs for the second time in the space of few seconds. He let his eyes trail over Theo’s face, briefly lingering on his lips, before he drew them away to look once again into Theo’s eyes. He noticed that the playful smirk on Theo’s lips was softening his eyes in an unusual way and wondered how could it be that the boy laying on top of him was the same one that seemed ready to tear him to pieces just seconds before.

Liam swallowed as he felt the urge to hit the Theo resurface in full force.

“I think I am too comfortable to move, actually.” Theo whispered in his face. “You should get used to it because I don’t see why I should go back to using my pillow when you are so much more comfortable.”

Liam felt his eyes widening as he sensed a rush of blood to his face which could only mean he was turning red and there was no way that Theo wouldn’t notice. Shit.

“Very comfortable” Theo added and then he moved his hand to Liam’s shoulder before starting running his fingertips down Liam’s side. “And soft.” Theo finished, breathing on Liam’s burning face.

Liam’s whole body felt like he had been lit on fire.

He felt like everything inside of him was burning, starting for his heart, where the fire had taken off towards the rest of his body, up to his face and down to his toes.

He felt Theo’s fingertips coming to rest on his right hand, the blood-painted one, that was lying on the concrete next to him and he couldn’t help the shiver that run through his body like a lightning. He recognized it as the same kind of rush that he felt when he got the impulse to fight someone.

Theo was still laying on top of him, looking down into his face and Liam didn’t know what to do. He tried to swallow but there was a lump in his throat and his lungs didn’t give him any oxygen to help his brain think a little bit better.

Theo’s fingertips were still lingering on Liam’s open palm so he decided to focus on the contact between his skin and blood and Theo’s warm fingers. He saw Theo’s eyes trail towards their joined hands and before he could think anything of it, the other boy started softly tracing his fingertips on Liam’s palm, slowly dragging them towards Liam’s wrist, leaving a faint trace of blood behind them.

Liam didn’t really think that he could hurt Theo given the circumstances (Theo laying on top of him, Theo having rendered him breathless, Theo being having caused him a mental breakdown,...  _Theo being Theo_ ) but he also knew that the possibility couldn’t be safely ruled out. He had felt the familiar rush running through him after all, and he knew too well that the rush meant that he wanted to hit Theo. Why wouldn’t the idiot laying on his chest understand that he was in danger of being the target of a badly managed anger problem as well?  

“Alright you’re starting to turn purple and I really don’t want to see Scott’s eyes turn blue after he kills me because I killed you. Not when I’m finally part of the pack.” Theo laughed as he suddenly lifted himself up from Liam stomach and quickly left the room, without sparing a single look back.

Suddenly Liam was able to breathe again. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to go blank because he wasn’t sure that he could process just now anything of what had happened.

 _Wrong idea_. If he closed his eyes his brain would just start replaying what had just happened over and over again.

Liam snapped his eyes open before he finally got up from the ground, blaming the shiver he felt run along his spine on the cold floor.

He wouldn’t let his mind go there. He would not think about the strange friendship he had built with Theo and about what it meant that he felt the way he did whenever he was around him. Liam could not do it because every time he did he felt like his stomach was the pit of a volcano ready to erupt and his heart started beating as fast as it did when he was having an anger attack.

Because, _of course,_ what he felt was anger.

He was angry at the fact that Theo had squished him against the dirty floor, after he had attacked him for no apparent reason.

The anger he had felt then and the anger he was used to feel around the other boy was why his first reaction had been to punch Theo. Because he was pissed off at the boy, that and nothing else.

Liam shook his head to clear it of thoughts and left the narrow room in the dark before stepping into a larger and better lighted room. Theo was nowhere to be seen, so he allowed himself to sit down. He slid his back down against the wall and reached the ground with a tump.  He still wasn’t feeling one hundred percent okay and he blamed it on the blow he had taken just minutes before.

He sighed and as he stretched his left hand beside his thighs his fingertips encountered something soft and warm. Without thinking Liam lifted Theo’s discarded hoodie to his face and inhaled the boy’s scent before realising what he had just done.

 _Why_ he had done it.

He was fucked.

So, so, fucked.

Suddenly a rush of feelings he had tried to hide behind a false indifference came rushing out his heart, the volcano in his stomach coming alive after having been kept at bay by Liam’s head for far too long.

Liam had known for about a month that what he felt when he was around Theo, and every time he thought about him, had to be something more than the need to fight him. But he had refused to tackle these feeling because he knew that if he did he would not be able to turn back ever again. He wouldn’t have been able to take shelter into the big, warm, comfortable bubble of denial he had built around himself anymore. And because hitting Theo was way easier than dealing with unrequited feelings.

Why and how he had started developing feelings for Theo were two questions that he did not know how to answer and therefore did not want to ask himself but after what had happened just minutes before he could no longer deny that the feelings were there, stronger than ever, and that they didn’t seem to want to go away.

Liam fixed his eyes on the traces of blood that Theo’s fingertips had left on his hand and a shivered at the thought of Theo’s warm touch.

Liam closed his eyes for what felt like the millionth time that night, and let himself feel everything he had tried to shut out for so long.

He thought back of the day before, of when he had suddenly woken up wrapped in Theo’s smell and felt that his feet were dangling in the air and tiredness was pulling at his eyelids. He had fought against the instinct to suddenly open his eyes and tried to picture in his head where he was. Liam still remembered what he had felt when he had realised that the only explication he had to why his feet were dangling in the air and he was laying his head against Theo’s warm chest, was that the boy had picked him up while he was asleep.

He had been invested by a strange feeling that he could only place among the fluttering ones he had felt in the past when he had been crushing on Hayden. Liam had thought that it didn’t make any sense for him to feel that way while he was being carried by Theo, but in his sleeping haze he had not given much thought to the matter, focusing instead on trying to keep his eyes closed so that Theo would not realise that he’d woken up.

Theo’s hand on his cheek had been a harder test to his ability at faking being asleep and Liam had had to battle his eyelids to keep them shut when he had felt the bed bending under Theo’s weight. His first thought had been of the night he had spent with Theo’s chest pressed to his back in the cold of the dusty cabin in the woods. Liam thought back of that night more times that he’d have liked to admit, but the way he went about it was exactly the same with which he approached anything related to his feelings towards Theo.

He didn’t really think about them, more like pushed them away as soon as they surfaced and came up with excuses to justify what he felt.

What had kept him up all night after Theo had left the night before, was the thought of what he should have done differently when he had woken up into Theo’s arms, then when he had felt his fingertips on his cheek and lastly when Theo had almost fell on him.

He had thought back and forth about what his passivity meant, the fact that he hadn’t done anything bothered him. A lot. He didn’t have any excuse to why he hadn’t reacted, not then and not back at the cabin, and his brain didn’t seem to want to come up with a reason either. That’s to say, a reason that didn’t imply him liking being in Theo’s arms.

Which wasn’t a reason Liam was willing to accept until a few moments before, when he had finally admitted to himself that it was the only explication that made sense.

Liam sighed. The reason why he had come to the warehouse in the first place was to confront Theo in the hope that the boy would be able to explain to him why he had decided that picking him up and bringing him to his room was the best thing to do instead of just waking him up. That was the plan, until he hadn’t been hit by Theo’s punch the second he had seen him after he had finally managed to open the heavy metal door of the discarded warehouse.

Thinking in retrospect Liam knew that he would probably have done the same if he was living on a sketchy place and somebody tried to break in at night.

Not that the reason why Theo had really hit him really mattered, seeing as it all had come down to this moment, him sitting on the cold ground with the knowledge that he liked Theo and Theo nowhere to be seen after he had stormed off the room.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah...sorry for the wait...it's just that I have so much work to do for uni and that I wasn't really happy with how this chapter came out in some parts and started overthinking and doubting everything :// but I decided to post it anyway bc what can you do??  
> I hope it's not as shitty as it seems to me the more read it  
> ALSO: since I was having a writer block or whatever concerning this fic I started writing another one so...look out for it (in about three months seeing as I always need to have an existential crisis before i finally post something ah ha ah)
> 
> I wanted to thank everyone who commented on the last chapter; your comments made my week and are some of the sweetest and most encouraging things i have ever read so thank you a million times!
> 
> Song: [Untitled (For Now)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DJVbFErEx4)
> 
> The next chapter will be set right after the end of this one (so not a day or some days after like usual) and ofc will be from Theo's pov :)


	5. I found love while dreaming of meteor showers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so so sorry I haven't uploaded for so long + I'm sorry this chapter is so short... I hope somebody is still interested in reading this <3 thanks for your patience
> 
> also... If you want you can listen to the playlist for this fic I made on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/likestarsinthesea/playlist/3RcDKRf6g8VwOrOiSS6Pdv?si=gLx1vqKxSDGQ16z29fsuXw

_I can't take my eyes off you_ __  
cause I realize the reason why I'm here tonight  
and what I breathe for  
and I found love while dreaming of meteor showers

_…_

_I knew it was love I was feeling_

 

Theo didn’t understand why Liam had to come seek him out without warning him first, in the closest place to a house that he had had for the first time in years.

Theo knew that the luxury to have a place to call home wasn’t something he’d ever been granted, but this old warehouse was at least the shell of a house and he liked that. As he quickly exited the room leaving Liam behind, still was laying on the floor, Theo realised that the last thing he needed was to drive off once again in search of a safe place where he could stay.

Theo let down his guard when he was alone in the warehouse at night and he couldn’t risk anybody to see that side of him, the vulnerable boy the kept hidden under layers of fake self-assurance and toughness when he was exposed to the sunrays while spending time with the pack.

_The sun, the moon and the truth._

The mantra that he had heard Liam whisper under his breath just minutes before didn’t have for him the same meaning that it had for Liam but it still held a profound meaning for Theo.

The sun was his bold side, the façade he carefully constructed and took care to maintain around other people. The moon was instead the only witness to his vulnerable self, the silent emissary of the nightmares that woke him up in a cold sweat and the only one to know the exact shape of his demons. The truth was something that he could hide. The truth lied in the night and Theo’s only worry was to keep it there, folded upon itself and wrapped into the moon’s complicity. If the night didn’t falter, the truth would not come out and his daylight self would never be torn apart to expose the night-time truth.

Theo had been careful not to let any of it mix up and to prevent the inevitable mess resulting from such a possibility but that had worked only until he had fallen for Liam without being able to prepare himself.

Theo was mad at himself for having failed to realize that the suns that the other boy held in his eyes were a different kind of stars from the ones that kept his secrets in the dark, that they were ones that stripped him bare of his walls without him being able to do anything about it.

Nobody ever taught him how not to fall for boys with stars in their eyes and blood on their hands. No matter how fucked up and cruel his life had been, nobody had ever taught him how to be ready for this kind of war. Fights and punches and blood and death he could take but smiles and warmth and love he did not know how to deal with.

Why did Liam have to fuck it all up?

Theo knew that he was angry at himself because he hadn’t been able to keep Liam out, not out of his house like he liked to pretend, but out of his heart.

That was why just a minute before, while looking inside the boy’s eyes, limbs spread on top of him, the resentment to push him away he had felt just minutes before when Liam had appeared at his door without any warning, had disappeared. Theo had realized that pushing Liam away from his house would have been only a temporary fix to the real problem.

Theo wished that Liam didn’t have this effect on him. He wished that he could be unaffected by the way the boy smiled, by the way his hair fell on his face and the way Liam blew them away with an annoyed look in his eyes. He wished he could stop himself form smiling and feeling his heart go all soft whenever Liam impressed him once again with his knowledge of history or surprised him when they were out in the woods, by stumbling on his own feet and falling to the ground like a small puppy that was still learning how to walk on his paws.

He hated how he couldn’t conceal the excitement in his voice when he accepted yet another assignment from Scott that involved spending time alone with Liam.

He hated how Liam had taken him by surprise by crossing the warehouse’s threshold that night. How he had entered the space that Theo had had to fight to turn it into his house and that he had sworn to himself nobody would have ever seen. He hated that he wasn’t really mad at Liam for storming in because he could see how the place lighted up when the boy was there. He hated how Liam had come to break down even the last wall he was still able to hold up, after he had destroyed every single one before that.

He hated that Liam was able to throw him off balance, to sweep him up his feet and leave him breathless by just existing. He hated not being in control and hated how much he liked to know that he could count on Liam, that he could trust him.

He hated how much he loved Liam.

Truth was that Liam could never love him back, not after what Theo had done in the past, and Theo knew that he needed to stop kidding himself into thinking that somehow this feet-sweeping feeling he was nursing could go both ways. He had been paying too much attention to every single detail of his interactions with Liam and that was of course the reason why he had fooled himself into finding signs that Liam might like him back where there was nothing.

Theo kept walking until he was out of the warehouse ground and disappeared into the fog, hoping his thoughts would be swallowed by the hovering droplets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally on a break which means I finally have time to work on this fic (and another one that I'm writing....*winky emoji*) so yeah, maybe the next chapter will be up before 2019 :D


	6. you can't get struck by lightning if you're not standing in the rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of this fic...it only took me a year to finally post this but yeah, here it is  
> Title of the chapter is taken from the song "Call If You Need Me" by Vance Joy (it's in the playlist for this fic, link at the end of the chapter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, i bet you thought you'd seen the last of this fic

_I’ve loved you in the darkness and loved you in florescent light_

 

Liam reminded himself that he was mad at Theo.

Mad because the boy didn’t seem to understand. Mad because his judgement around him had been so clouded that everybody in the pack had started to question why, all of a sudden, Liam was always on Theo’s side.

Liam had deflected the questions saying that he needed to keep an eye on Theo, to make sure the chimera wouldn’t go off on a killing spree. He had told Scott that he was the one to blame for them spending so much time together, he was the one who sent them off in the woods.

As if Liam didn’t have a say in the matter, as if he couldn’t have asked Scott to send another pack member, like Malia.

But in the back of his mind Liam also knew that he couldn’t blame it all on Scott. He knew that whenever Theo showed up in the room he felt as if a knife had been thrown in his heart and this he couldn’t blame on anyone else but himself.

Liam was mad at himself more than he was mad at anybody else.

 

He got up and sprinted outside.

 

The fog that had been nothing more than a thin veil just one hour before had spread and enveloped everything that was more than two feet away from where Liam stood right outside the warehouse. Theo could be anywhere so Liam decided against walking in a random direction hoping it was the right one. A growl of frustration escaped his lips. That was something that he knew how to deal with. Letting out his frustration towards Theo through noises was nothing new.

“THEO, YOU BETTER COME HERE!” he growled at the wall of fog. “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHY DID YOU LEAVE, YOU ASSHOLE!”

He closed his mouth and eyes and waited. It was easy to scream and be angry as a way to escape his mind and to avoid confronting his feelings but silence gave him space to let his thoughts wander. And to feel afraid. What if Theo would not come back this time? What if Liam had inadvertently done something to really upset the chimera and Theo had decided to run off for good?

He could not bear this though so he decided to move, no matter in which direction, just run and let his feet thump against the ground to fill the silence.

“Theo, I swear if you don’t come here…” he tried once again, not sure what his next words would be like. _I swear I will kill you_? Not original enough. _I will get the pack to track you down?_ And for what? He wasn’t even sure Theo had ran off for real. Liam needed to stop panicking and overthinking. Maybe Theo had just decided to go for a walk.

In the middle of a conversation the two of them were having.

On the ground.

Laying on top of each other.

Liam knew how stupid this explanation sounded but it was better to think that Theo had suddenly decided to leave because he wanted to go for a walk, rather than addressing the fact that Liam had started getting turned on by the weight of Theo on top of him. Liam didn’t want to think about what that meant because if would force him to admit that not only he really liked Theo but also that the boy had an undeniable impact on his sexuality.

“I swear if you don’t come here I will never forgive myself for not punching you on the mouth with my lips.” _What?_ Did he really say that out loud? Liam mumbled with a sigh and before he could hit himself for being such a fucking idiot for liking Theo he felt something _hit_ into him from behind.

“You what?”

Liam turned quickly, losing his balance, and Theo was standing there. _Oh fuck_.

_Fuck! Fuck._

“Why are you trying to make my life like hell?” Liam turned towards Theo and stabbed the boy on his chest with his finger. “Why don’t you just leave? You got Scott’s approval! You got a place in the pack like you always wanted, people trust you now! Your ego should be okay. Why are you still here? What do you get out of this?” What had started out as a string of hurried questions as an attempt to cover up his stupid ‘I would not mind kissing you’ confession turned into a deeper outburst. Liam realized that he was screaming but he didn’t care. Nobody would be in or near the forest so late, which meant that nobody could hear him.

“I helped you regain his trust Theo. I know you accomplished what you set off to do. I helped you! I was beside you and guided you, told you what Scott would have liked and what he would never want you to do! You were my responsibility but you no longer are! So why are you still here?” Liam finished.

When he finally dared lifting his eyes from Theo’s chest to look him in the eyes Liam saw that Theo was smirking but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Liam realized that Theo was upset and realized that he had just made things way worse. _Fuck_.

“Do you really think that Scott needed me to do all I did, before he decided that I was good enough to deserve his forgiveness? Do you really think that? Do you also happen to think that I stayed at your side, collecting bruises and scars, because that was the only way to get what I wanted? That I offered myself as bait just because I wanted to impress Scott?” Theo let out a little sarcastic laugh that reached Liam right between his ribs and stabbed him in the heart.

“How does this mental picture of yours fit with the fact that it was _you_ I showed up to save from Nolan? That it was by _your_ side to stop you from hurting Gabe and regretting it later?” Theo continued and Liam couldn’t look away from the boy’s face. For the first time maybe ever, he recognized truth in Theo’s.

“Do you think I listen to you talk about Vikings and the fall of the Roman empire, and all these stuffs you learned in your history class just because I think that this will get Scott to like me?”. Theo abruptly stopped talking. “God, you can be really dumb.” His features were smothered by a sadness that strongly contrasted with the anger they had showed when he had started talking. Liam couldn’t reply to any of what Theo had just said, so he stayed still and watched the boy as he passed a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth them or maybe to calm himself, Liam wasn’t sure.

The only thing he knew was that it made him want to get closer to Theo, to try to help him do whatever he was trying to do to his hair.

 

Because Theo was right, helping him was exactly what Liam had been trying to do all this time and it was what he had believed he was doing.

But Theo was also right about how Liam had been in need of his help more often than not, and about all the times the other boy had saved him from getting injured, from making bad decisions, from getting killed.

“So what? Just because you helped me just as much as I helped you… it doesn’t mean that you get to stay! I can look after myself Theo! In fact that’s what I had been doing before you showed up-”.

Liam was cut off by Theo who started taking a step back.

“It was _you_ who brought me back” Theo said with a tired note on his unwavering voice. “So excuse me if I deluded myself into thinking that some part of you must have wanted me here.” 

Liam wasn’t ready to hear what he knew in his heart to be true and flinched at how much truth these words held. If Theo knew that more than a part of him wanted him to stay- “Why don’t you see that I can take care of myself?” Liam tried.

“That is so beside the point-”. Theo spoke over Liam as he took another step back and started to turn around but although Liam heart was starting to break at the sight of the other boy’s anger mixed with sadness, he couldn’t refrain himself from finishing his sentence.

“Why can’t you see that I don’t need you?” Liam felt his own heart break in the middle as he pronounced these words whose weight felt unbearable because he knew that the truth to be the exact opposite of what he had just said.

Seeing Theo’s back turned away from him, shoulders slumping down and fists tightly shut at his side emptied him of any trace of anger he had left. “I don’t need you.” He said once again as he stepped towards Theo and reached for his shoulder. Liam tugged at the boy’s shoulder to pull him closer, unable to resist the alarms going on in his head, telling him to turn around and walk away.

Pressing his hand to Theo’s shoulder Liam slowly turned Theo so that the boy faced him, to be able to finally stare at him.

Theo’s hurt eyes flashed at him. Liam hit him on the chest with a weak punch, his head falling on Theo’s chest, his own heart screaming to be pulled back together while flames burned at the pieces.

“I don’t need to feel like this when I am with you and I don’t need to feel empty when I am not.” His hand was fisted on Theo’s chest where the punch had landed on the t-shirt’s hem. Liam gripped at the hem like he would have to a buoy in the sea. Where was all the water of the ocean when his heart needed it?

“I-” he took a deep breath and lifted his head to stare into Theo’s eyes. The boy’s eyes were framed by furrowed brows and a half concerned, half mad face, but Liam also read something soft in Theo’s posture, his hands were no longer fisted and he watched as Theo brought them up to his elbows and wrapped them lightly around Liam’s biceps.

Theo took a deep breath.

“Liam, why where you talking about kissing me? Before you started screaming at me.” Theo asked in a whisper.

The warmth of Theo’s hands on his arms gave Liam the courage to inch closer to the boy.

As he held his breath he finally crashed into Theo’s lips.

He felt like his stomach and heart and whole body were now on fire and he couldn’t tell apart anything, couldn’t feel anything but the fire of a million stars burning inside him. His lips parted on Theo’s and the softness he felt was refreshing, like the air you breathe at night when you are laying on the grass looking at the starry sky. He briefly wondered if that would be enough to put off the burning stars inside him and remembered in the same breath that fire feeds off of oxygen. He pulled away from Theo with the understanding that he was destined to keep burning because the only way he knew how to put of the fire apparently was also the reason that kept the fire alive.

Liam finally dared to breath in again, Theo’s scent filling his lungs, and opened his eyes. Theo was standing completely still with his eyes closed and Liam felt a shiver of fear run through him. Slowly Theo’s eyelids lifted from his eyes, eyelashes softly casting a shadow on his red cheeks.

Liam suddenly realized that it was cold, the temperature had dropped and as Theo released a breath, a small puff escaped his parted lips.

“So…was it because you like me?” Theo giggled and before Liam could register anything else he was being pulled closer to Theo. The second time his lips crashed with the other boy’s Liam already knew them and waited for the fresh rush of cold air to hit him.

Theo reached up to Liam’s face and laid his hands on both sides of it and Liam lost all sense of time.

 

When they finally pulled back it was so that they could breathe. A small smile pulled at the corners of Liam’s mouth but when he lifted his face and saw Theo’s sparkling eyes and his grin, he was unable to restrain himself from mirroring it.

“So…” Theo left out softly and a shiver run through Liam.

Liam felt a laugh bubble up inside of him “I need you.” he laughed as the confession left him, no longer weighting too much but light enough to settle in his heart without crashing it.

He saw Theo’s feature become serious and then shift into something else, a resolute expression that made him look more handsome than Liam had ever seen him. Before he could read into the expression some more Theo had reached out and cupped his face into his hands to kiss him while his hands stoke Liam’s face and then slipped on the back of his neck.

“We could go back to yours, what do you think?” Theo proposed with a smile while he stroked Liam’s cheek. Liam nodded at Theo’s suggestion and took a step to the side before he took off running towards the car, to avoid falling back into kissing Theo. But before he could reach the vehicle he felt an arm wrap around him and before he knew it he was slammed to the ground by Theo who fell on top of him. He let out a laugh and rolled them over so that Theo could get some damp brown leaves in his hair as well.

Also because he wanted to get a better angle to kiss him. Theo’s lips parted in a smile beneath Liam’s and his hands tangled in Liam’s hair. _Fuck._

“Unless you want me to freeze my ass to death laying upon those damp leaves in the fog, I suggest we get up right this moment and get in the fucking car.” Liam laughed at Theo. _Gosh_ Theo knew how to make him laugh and feel so warm inside. Liam couldn’t believe how lucky he was.

He mustered all his self-will to part from Theo’s lips and he got up. He extended a hand to help the other boy up but Theo refused to take it.

“All I got from the little speech you made before, was that you seem to think I no longer need your help. Why are you offering me your hand” Theo teased as he lifted himself up. “And I really want to get to your home as soon as we can, so you might want to cut back on the chivalry.” Theo pecked him on the cheek and opened the car’s door. “After you my prince.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Liam scoffed as he lightly smacked Theo’s ass as he got in the car.

The car was cold but the fire inside Liam’s heart kept him warm for way longer than the car ride.

 

**Epilogue**

Liam woke up in a room that was still dark, a stripe of pink colouring the sky outside the windows that were covered by a thin tent. They only let the faintest glimmer of light into the room, which plunged it in a purple washed out atmosphere.

Liam’s eyes scanned the skin of Theo’s arm, against which Liam’s face must have snuggled during the night. His eyes stopped wondering on a small scar on Theo’s bicep. Without thinking he brought his lips above it and deposed a soft kiss against the spot. A content sigh escaped his body as he smiled at the sleeping body near him and shuffled closer to the source of warmth and security that he had come to find in Theo. He felt the other boy shift in his sleep and before he could fall asleep again him himself Theo’s arms wrapped around him. He was at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU so much for reading and for your comments, ily <3
> 
> If you want to listen to the playlist I made for this: https://open.spotify.com/user/likestarsinthesea/playlist/3RcDKRf6g8VwOrOiSS6Pdv?si=9PCTp1zhSU-REe4yiyrzcQ
> 
> If you want to talk on tumblr hit me up @ evakviigmoon


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